I got lucky with this Anvil!

[arkie]

10 hours ago, DHarris said:

Sounds like the way someone from the city or Hollywood would say it. 

Well, it's a Hispanic word and that's the way my Hispanic friends pronounce it.........

[Donal Harris]

I agree that is the correct pronunciation. It just sounds wrong to me. Sort of wimpy. Coyotes are anything but. 

[arkie]

Where I grew up in W. Texas, lots of  folks call them "kai-yotes", LOL.  Regardless of how you say it, I think everyone knows who you're talking about, "Wylie" or otherwise.  Yeah, they can be a pain in the posterior.

[Chris C]

We just say "Shot another yote today, honey!"  Saves all that tongue work.

[George N. M.]

I once thought of using "Coyote Forge" but I couldn't find an Acme brand anvil.  When I've been demonstrating I've had people point out my anvil to their children and tell them that that is a real anvil like in the roadrunner cartoons.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[SLAG]

Mr. George C. ,

SLAG  thinks that the reason that you did not find an Acme anvil is that most of them have unsuccessfully been tossed off of cliffs.

Mr. Wyl E Coyote may have a few of them left.

Phone Warner Brothers.

Heh  Heh!

Regards,

SLAG.

[George N. M.]

Somewhere in an unpacked box I have a humorous legal book which contains the Complaint in a products liability case of Wile E. Coyote vs. Acme Products, Inc. in which the plaintiff alleges that the Defendant's products have been consistently defective and have injured him grievously including compressing his body into an accordion shape which caused him to emit embarrassing wheezing noises when he walked.  If and when I find it I will scan the pages and post it.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand." 

I found the article on the internet at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1990/02/26/coyote-v-acme   It was originally published the New Yorker in 1990.  

[Frosty]

Thanks for the link George, as soon as I see the ads on TV for the class action suit I'm calling! 

Frosty The Lucky.

[arkie]

As a kid, I would often call the movie house to see if Roadrunner cartoons were being shown on their movies that were currently running.  If they were, I'd go regardless of the movie just to see a new RR cartoon!  Never really saw a bad movie, either!

[Scooter430]

got bored again today. moved the anvil and built a WOID forge. lol Whole In Dirt. anyway think I used to big a piece of pipe for a tuyere as well as to big a vacuum... did I mention I used old lumber as fuel.... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, but I did manage to get the metal glowing red 3 times and beat on it a little. Results of round two with a horribly and uneducated built forge... also used a much smaller hammer.

 

[Frosty]

Good, you built a fire and took a slash at it. Well done! Blacksmithing is a life long learning curve, reading and talking is only a small part, it's your time at the anvil that makes a blacksmith.

What did you learn? 

The up front mistakes you made are common for new guys. A shop vac is Way W A Y too much air, a blow drier is too much air for a decent sized COAL fire let alone charcoal. With even a fraction of the output from a shop vac a wood fire will roast you within 5 - 6' f of the fire and there'll be so much air it'll blow the heat right through and out. 

Burning wood turns into charcoal and the bed of charcoal is where the HEAT is. 

A hole in the ground forge is as ancient as humans beating metal into tools and ornaments. A trench works better for charcoal and especially wood. Either crosswise or lengthwise to the blast pipe. Both have advantages and disadvantages.  In either case you can let your wood pyrolize away from the blast so it doesn't cook you and just burn up. As it burns to coals you rake them to the blast pipe and your work. 

The JABOD is modeled on ground forges as old as humans and  metal. You don't really need bricks or DRY!!!  sand stone to form the fire trench. When I say DRY stone I mean really dry, porous like sand stone is better. If there is moisture trapped in the stone  it can cause a steam EXPLOSION when it's greater than about 220f. This is a B A D thing.

If you follow Charles's "directions" for laying out the JABOD for your trench forge it'll work just like it has for millennia.

You want to place your work in the zone far enough from the blast pipe that all the oxygen has been consumed. This is the sweet zone or heart the hottest and cleanest area. Farther from the blast is a carburizing zone and good for preheating or slow cooling but not hot enough for general forge work. Too close to the blast and the free oxygen WILL burn the steel and it can prevent it from reaching forging temp by blowing the heat past. Yeah, it can keep it too cool AND burn it up at the same time.

To get better practice I recommend any smooth faced hammer under 32 oz. That's plenty of weight to do good work and not so heavy it'll tire you as quickly and less likely to cause injury. It also takes longer to make your mistakes permanent. Once you build THOSE muscles and the hammer control heavier hammers may be what you settle on. But YEAH you need a heavier hammer than THAT. 

The other thing I recommend is smaller steel, I start folk with 3/8" square or 1/2" round, both are about the same mass per inch. there's enough mass it won't cool before you get some hammer time and doesn't burn up if you sneeze or take a drink of water while it's in the fire. 

The biggest thing you've done. You've built a fire and beat something into submission, keep at it and before long you'll be teaching  your friends. It's always fun to have playmates, especially if they help cut and split wood, chip in for stock, charcoal, coal, etc.

The one other thing to remember besides PPE is this if FUN!

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[ThomasPowers]

Research showing that blow driers and vacuum cleaners are better air supply for a forge:  Perhaps it's skewed a bit due to availability and NOT being "better". Research will also show  that having to waste most of the air produced by these is a major issue.  I'd rather use a bellows than listen to a vacuum cleaner running for hours!

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

That's the main reason I use and love the old hand crank blowers. Quiet and easy to control the air blast, stop cranking and the air stops after several coasting revolutions of the handle. I started with a relatively quiet Dayton electric blower but found it to be a chore to remember to shut the air gate or switch off the blower when using the hammer & anvil.

[Scooter430]

I have a 45 cfm 12vdc fan. think that might he enough air. easy to put a potentiometer on to control speed of the fan.

[Frosty]

That should be plenty of air and an electric blower is a good memory exercise. A foot switch works but not so good if you do other things while the stock heats. 

Hand cranks are nice, sort of makes the fire more hands on.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

A good handcrank is nice.  I've used the small "crank as fast as you can for as long as you can" hand cranks before and ones that stop dead as soon as you take your hand off them---which is why I have a back-up good hand crank in my shop as well as the one I'm currently using!

[Frosty]

And if we time our blood sugar right we can be our own crank! 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Scooter430]

It worked GREAT! Till I broke it..... Still works just snapped one of the blades off and it is a 7 blade fan so I can't even snap the opposite one off to balance it.... Vibrates A LOT. I did take video of me heating the metal, pulling it out and hammering on it. little worried about posting it though. It is LONG and I would have to probably have to edit the crap out of it to make sure I didn't say anything bade... Don't believe I did because My daughter was in the backyard, but not really sure.

 

Big thanks Frosty! Your post Helped A LOT. I started the fire and let it burn for awhile till I had a nice pile of embers at the bottom. Then I added the fan and the steal!

[ThomasPowers]

One thing to remember---the workpiece should be horizontal in the hot spot---why forges and firepots usually have gaps on their sides to allow you to slid the workpiece in horizontally.   A steep angle promotes burning up your steel as the bottom of the fire is where it's hot and the evil oxygen is still free to burn your metal.  (Also at some point you will want to heat the middle of a piece!)

[Scooter430]

thanks everyone. been at it awhile now. forge fell off the wood I had it on.. but that has not slowed me down. I have tried many different things to try and get a good pit going, but think I have exhausted all of them. so guess I will go back to my whole in the ground. the fuel I was using is a horrible fuel... pine lumber is the worst. lol barley gets it red, but I have gotten some stuff done 

 

[Glenn]

From the video of the forge, you need to double (or more) the amount of fuel in the forge and reduce the amount of air.  Fuel does not make the fire hot, air makes the fire hot.  Only use the amount of air that is needed to get the heat that you want.

[Frosty]

There's nothing wrong with pine charcoal, it burns faster but hotter, it's not the fuel. Your hole is WAY too deep and big around. Try making it small, say 4-5" around and 3" deep. then stand two fire bricks on edge on each side with the tuyere aimed across the space. under the center of one brick aimed at the other, about 1" off the bottom.

For a charcoal forge what I describe is large forge. Only direct a little of your fan at the funnel, maybe 1/4 of it after you get a nice bed of coals. A nice bed of coals will be heaped above ground level between the bricks and you lay your steel horizontally and buried in the heap. You can keep the coals up by burning the wood on top of the mound and letting them settle in. 

If you watch the 3rd. world black smith videos you see them doing serious work with a fire that'd fit in a salad bowl. A forge fire needs to be small but intense, not big and roaring. If your steel isn't getting hot putting more wood on the fire is exactly the opposite of what you need to do. Small, deep and intense. By deep I don't mean a deep hole, I mean a deep pile of coals, 4-5" is a serious bed of coals.

Less air, smaller hole and sides. IF you don't want to dig a V trench, say 4-5" wide at the top, about 2+ wide at the bottom and 10-12" long. The tuyere pipe entering 1" off the bottom dead center of one side. If you build a fire off to one side where YOU won't be roasted like a turkey you can shovel coals into the forge s needed. 

This isn't rocket science, it's just a forge fire. Smaller than you need is better than too large, it's easy to add more fuel a little at a time till you have it right than trying to let it burn down till it's right. A JABOD is exactly the same as the trench forge I described above on the ones you see 3rd world smiths using. There is no "right" shape, it's more of a rule of thumb than a specific shape. You don't really need a trench or something to contain the charcoal if you play it right though it's harder to manage.

The pic is of a field expedient forge I mane to repair a log tong I'd straightened lifting logs with it and a back hoe. The tongs were on a wooden pole so two men could drag a log. Yarding logs out of the forest with a back hoe exceeded it's design limits.

The forge is backed by the piece of log beside me, the air bast is the yellow mattress inflator blower behind me, it's IIRC at least a foot away from the piece of pipe I was using as a tuyere and only putting a breeze in the pipe. And yes, I'm using a birch log as an anvil. I was only recurving and setting the points on the log tong not really "forging" the steel. I did sharpen one point a little so it'd bite better. 

I could've easily made that fire weld had I needed to though I would've moved it farther from the pile of logs.

Frosty The Lucky.

[TheWanderingLlama]

Scooter:  I struggled a bit with my charcoal forge and went through a couple of different designs.  
The main issue I had was an underpowered blower.  Charcoal doesn’t need a lot of air - which is true - but blower characteristics are all quite different. I was using a squirrel cage blower with a ~5” diameter rotor which “should” have moved plenty of air. The pressure versus flow characteristics were such that it did not.

To debug things and see what “real air” will do, I would suggest playing around a bit with a shop vac. This is a horrible blower as it is loud, large, expensive, etc.  BUT it will provide plenty of air.  If you have a means to hold a 6” diameter “ball” of charcoal and blow air through it you will get to forging tends.

The shop vac will take the “not enough air” issue out of the equation so you can verify that your forge shape is at least doable and you can see with your eyes what the right amount of air can do.  Be careful if you go this route - you don’t want to hook the shop vac up directly to your tuyere or it will blow the charcoal right out of the forge (which needless to say is dangerous.).

I was struggling with getting the hot spot high enough not to have to angle my work down into the forge to find it. Once I did this it convinced me that the issue was by blower. I then built a box bellows and it solved the problem. 

[Frosty]

3 hours ago, TheWanderingLlama said:

I would suggest playing around a bit with a shop vac.

What are you talking about? Are you drawing on your years of experience here or what? You could swing the fire around your head to get an idea of what too much air is like too. Suggesting a shop vac is like buying a teen who gets speeding tickets a Ferrari. Exactly the opposite of useful advice.

You have plenty of air Scooter, more than enough please ignore the last post it won't do you ANY good. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Chelonian]

It has to do with more than just the unobstructed volume of air the air supply can move though. The reason axial fans like the one Scooter is using are not typically used as a forge blower is because they produce quite a low static pressure as compared to centrifugal fans (blowers). This means that while the fan might seem to move a lot of air when unobstructed, as soon as the fire becomes nice dense bed of coals the fan may no longer be able to force enough air though the fire. Also, axial fans will not be able to blast through obstructions like ash buildup (or clinker, when applicable) as well as an air supply with higher pressure.

As TheWanderingLlama mentioned, not all centrifugal fans are the same. Squirrel cage blowers generally don't produce much pressure because the impeller is wide, and the vanes are short. In contrast, a thin impeller with long vanes will produce much higher pressure (at the cost of airflow, of course). Housing design also can change the pressure vs. volume characteristics.

I certainly agree that an unregulated shop vac would produce far to much air, but if you have issues keeping the fire going once it becomes a dense bed of coals, you may want to look into buying or making a centrifugal blower with suitable characteristics. If you have a suitable motor, making the impeller and housing of the blower yourself is not too difficult. Box bellows are also a very good option for charcoal forges.